Archive for the 'New Market Produce' Category

So, I’m not quite on vacation yet. I’m not in New York and I’m not where I’m supposed to be right now (Santa Fe). I’m sitting in the Albuquerque airport waiting for a shuttle to take me to Santa Fe. I was supposed to be there several hours ago but am a complete idiot and slept through my flight!!!! I had a 7:30am flight out of New York thinking I would have no problem getting up-I love early flights and am always popping right out of bed when I need to. Not this morning…I woke up at 6:45 and there was no way I was going to make it. After lots of tears and LOTS of swearing and me screaming irrational crap to the Continental rep, I made it, but I’m not quite there. I’m on my way to Santa Fe and Taos for a week with my family celebrating my Dad’s 60th birthday (happy birthday!), and we were all supposed to be on the same connecting flight from Houston to Albuquerque, but I obviously didn’t make it. And while my family is currently enjoying margaritas in Santa Fe, I’m passing time in the Albuquerque airport by blogging (good job Albuquerque airport on having free wireless!). Ugh. What a way to mess up a family trip Betsy!

I have a about 25 minutes till I need to meet my shuttle to I’ll pump out my new crazy market veg post of the week! Fiddlehead ferns. I feel like I was on a tricycle last week with my sunchoke and went to compete in the Tour de France with the fiddleheads. But, I saw a jar of them sitting at a stand last week and just knew I had to try them. They were crazy cheap and only available for a very short time so my window was closing. I bought about $.20 worth (about 8 ferns) and went on my way.

Pre-Cooking

Fiddlehead ferns are very young ferns that haven’t opened yet. When a fern emerges from the ground, it is coiled tightly and slowly uncurls to develop lots of leaves (yeah-I took a lot of botany classes in college). It’s at this early stage that they are edible and quite popular. At least they’re popular in the crazy native food eating circle. Actually, I’ve eaten them before but have never considered buying them so it was still adventurous. I cooked some up once at camp when I was a counselor. I actually think we fried them in about 1/2 inch of oil. Talk about turning something healthy into something unhealthy! But they were darn tasty. So, I was off to try them again.

I did my research all week to find out how best to cook them and just decided to make them plain, kinda like I did with the sunchoke. I did read that they need to be cooked entirely or they can cause stomach pain. Being the slightly paranoid cook, that freaked me out a little so I cooked them twice. I first cleaned them very well and trimmed off the brown bits. I then boiled them for about 4 minutes to kill any possibility of causing my stomach to be angry. I followed that with a quick saute in a tiny bit of olive oil along with salt and pepper. And went on to eat them. Truthfully, I was nervous. After reading about toxins and pain and this and that, I was freaked. But, then I remembered that yeah, I’d eaten them before and had lived to tell about it, so I dug in. I was expecting the flavor to be kinda a generic grassy green flavor. But, it was definitely distinctive. Kinda green beany. Kinda asparagusy. But definitely distinctive. I actually ate them really fast! They were pretty tasty just popping them into my mouth. And no stomach pain. Would I buy them again? Maybe, if they were really cheap again and I found some great recipe to use them in.

Sorry this post is kinda uninteresting. I don’t have time to make it funny or witty. And also I’m pretty physically and emotionally exhausted from this crazy day. Booo early flights and alarm clocks. Yay fiddleheads and Santa Fe!!

Oh, I got tagged by lots of people this week!!! I’m going to get on that soon…although that might not happen till next week.

Since I started shopping regularly at the farmers market last year, I tend to buy the same things every time. Carrots, lettuce, zucchini, sugar snap peas, tomatoes, herbs, green beans, fennel. Maybe some fruit if I’m feeling crazy. I’m a creature of habit and I know what I like. Also, I always rush through the market going to the same vendors for the same stuff-I’m there maybe 10 minutes. But, I’m not sure why I rush. On a nice day, I have no reason to rush but I do anyway. I never really look at new and different produce, stuff I’ve never tried or am not sure how to cook. I’m adventurous in a lot of my cooking but never in my market shopping. Crazy at the market for me is buying cilantro instead of basil. Livin’ on the edge! However, because of this there is so much stuff I’m missing! The Green Market is a fantastic farmers market with tons of vendors selling a huge variety of seasonal produce. By sticking to my rushed list I’m missing out on great produce at its peak that is super tasty. And it’s making me sad. 😦

However, after the success that was the ramps these past two weeks (I’d never tried them before), I decided to venture out and be a little crazy! My new goal at the market is to buy something new and different every week. It can be small and a single of one thing just to try it out, but I will buy something new that I’ve never either eaten or cooked with every week. I think it will be a fun to try new stuff and broaden my veggie horizons. It’s a great way to find new ways to cook my healthy food and taste the best that summer has to offer. Wow! Watch out-I’m taking some risks now!! (yeah-not really. but kinda.)

My first venture was buying that ugly sunchoke. I’ve seen them before at the market at a vendor that sells tons of different varieties of potatoes in the winter but had no idea what they were. I asked the seller and he said it was a root veg like a turnip or potato and available in the winter-it’s a good thing I got mine now cause they’re going to be unavailable soon! I’d seen them on menus at fancy schmancy restaurants and on Top Chef so I knew they were classy, like me. (Side note-has anyone else noticed how quinoa keeps popping up in tons of episodes? I feel so trendy considering one of my most commonly eaten foods is THE trendy ingredient on Top Chef. Yeah.) I picked a pretty small one (a bit smaller than my fist) and paid $.20 for it. Ahhh, cheap eats at the market. It took it home and promptly forgot about it. Until last night when I remembered I had bought it and decided to cook it up.

But how?? I googled sunchoke (also called a Jerusalem artichoke, latin name Helianthus tuberosus-so I’m a plant dork…are you gonna make fun of me?) and just decide to dice it and roast it so I could experience it without any other flavors covering it. It wanted to taste the sunchoke as it was so I could know how I could use it in the future and what flavors it would meld well with. So, I cut it up into chunks (it was white-like a potato on the inside) and tossed it in a hot (450) oven for about 45 minutes along with some chunks of sweet potato. When I removed it it looked like this:

I took a bite, having no idea what I was going to taste. I was expecting something bland, like a potato considering the inside looked like a potato. What did I taste? Something totally different! It without a doubt tasted like an artichoke and considering I like artichokes this was a good thing. The flavor was strong but not in an overpowering way. It could definitely be a dominant ingredient in a recipe-in a good way. I liked it. A lot. The flavor was bright and yummy. I could see it being good smashed with a little olive oil and lemon. Maybe mixed with smashed cauliflower to add volume. Mmmm-a simple recipe in the making? Possibly! Although just plain, how I ate it last night, was pretty perfect.

I ate it along with my sweet potatoes which was an excellent combo. The sweetness of the sweet potato combined with the bright and strong flavor of the sunchoke made it more interesting that my regular sweet potato.

Verdict? Sunchokes are yummy and will be purchased again. Success! My first risk-taking adventure into the world of unknown produce was a winner. Next time? who knows. Stay tuned…